It's Friday night. Occasionally on a Friday night, I like to drink beer or some other imbibement and chat. This is well established on this blog. Sometimes I drink too much and say stupid things. Sometimes I get blocked. This too we've gone over before.
But occasionally, being a single man, I browse the chatting sites. Not necessarily looking for a girlfriend/wife, just looking to chat with someone new. Usually female, but not always. I'm not going to tell you I've never surfed porn, I have. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about just chatting with people. You see, sometimes people around here don't want to chat late at night, and people back at home don't want to chat because it's too early for them. So I need to find people who are available. That's all.
I used to do this on Yahoo. What happened to just going on Yahoo and chatting with folks? I used to use a website for games called POGO and play games there while chatting with interesting folks. I sometimes like chatting with strangers. I used to play games on Facebook too for the same reason. Or I could even play with friends. Where the hell has all that stuff gone? And while we're on the subject, how were there about 100 sites for cam-chatting not so long ago, and now there are none? None for FREE that is. I remember owning webcams so I could chat with folks and see them sometimes. NOT ALWAYS naked either! Either this has become impossible, or really hard, or I just can't find any good sites because I always seem to search for ages signing up for shit giving out my info then finding out it's a crap site. This goes on for hours sometimes. While I drink. And get drunker. And drunker. And then I make a mistake and join a sketchy site and BAM I'm paying 30 bucks a month for life! How is this legal?
I had my VPN on Canada tonight and so one of the chat sites I went to read that and hooked me up with people from Vancouver. I lived in Vancouver before so we instantly had stuff to talk about. I was like a fish on the hook. "This person from Burnaby wants to chat with you." "You're from Burnaby? I used to live there," I foolishly typed. The person answered. And sent a pic. But I couldn't see either unless I upgraded my membership. Or at least START a membership by giving this site my email and a credit card number. A week was only 5 or 6 bucks. What could be the harm? So I signed up. I heard the noise my phone makes when I make a purchase. Sure enough, 4.77 Euro to IDAMAT.COM. What the hay, at least I could now view... I heard the noise of another purchase just seconds later. What the frig? I checked and sure enough, 19.05 Euro to IDAMAT.COM. I'm betting 19.05 Euro is about the same as 28.95 US dollars. That's what I pay to the unknown site that keeps billing me every month and I just can't find out who they are. Their harmless sounding name of THAT rebilling service is WSPAY.COM.
The site I was on, I've already forgotten. Findafriend or Localchat or some friendly sounding moniker like that. They don't tell you that when you buy a month, a week or even a day, you automatically start your monthly rebilling on the site. Never does that come up on the screen. If you search for half an hour through the billing and membership and details and personal settings until you finally find it, it DOES say that when you sign up for Findafriend or whateverthefuck, you automatically start a monthly rebilling charge of blah blah blah. So you keep searching until you find a way to cancel monthly rebilling. Evidently, I didn't do that the first time and promptly forgot the site I was on the night before the first time I did this. Tonight I went through the cancellation protocol.
Well isn't that interesting? There are five steps. The first step is which account you'd like to cancel monthly billing for. I had one from early this year. AH HA! IDAMAT and WSPAY are the same chiseling, greasy, slimy rebilling scam sites! So I pick the first one. Step two, what is the reason for cancellation? There is no box to fill in that says, "Because I never fucking UNCANCELLED you assholes!" Again, in what kind of backward, fuck-your-fellow-man society is this shit legal? Step three: check another box, step four: check another box, step five: call this toll free number 1800assfuck, and give them your account number, 123youscrewedme. I call the number and OF COURSE it doesn't work. Cannot be dialed as such in Korea evidently. I probably need to dial 1 then 001 or some crap before a toll free 1-800 number. I don't know and I don't care. I am going to Seoul Sunday so that I can do some banking Monday. I got the day off today. I already HAD it off, but I arranged things so that I didn't have to show up at the office to do nothing all day long. Instead I can save myself 60 bucks a month by cancelling my credit card. I HOPE!
What do you want to bet there is some fucked up banking rule that doesn't allow me to cancel my credit card? Maybe I have to make a phone call to some other number. This one will work, but it won't be English. Or maybe I'll have to visit some credit card cancellation office that will be as intimidating as the immigration office. THIS is the shit I dread leaving my apartment for!!! I absolutely know it's coming, I just can't predict the form it will take.
As I said, I tried to put a stop payment on the first scam site back in the winter in Jan or Feb. The bank teller said she couldn't do that. Couldn't do it! These scam sites are protected by the banks! Why are there not mandatory sirens and flashing red letters when you are about to sign up for one of these sites that say, "Warning: You are about to be scammed out of a certain amount of money for life! Are you sure you want to pay this scumbag website every month for the rest of your life?" But there aren't. There was absolutely NOTHING that warned me of any automatic rebilling. NOTHING.
How in the name of Alfred E. Newman could any country be so MAD that they could allow even ONE citizen to be cheated like this and laughingly call themselves "civilized?" I don't want to hear your justifications or rationalizations either. "Well it was probably a porn site." So what if it was? A guy wants to rub one out so he goes online to find some pictures or videos to "assist" him in his efforts. Not something he should be paying for for the rest of his life. "It's a clever idea. It's the entrepreneurial spirit." Fuck you! It's the larcenal spirit. "Buyer beware." I went to the mini mart today to buy the 4 beers I just drank. The cashier assumed I would use a card. She was SHOCKED to see my cash. We are basically being forced to abandon cash and use credit cards or phone pay services and nobody is even hinting that THEY beware. How about don't even make them available to the public until they are safe to use? Wipe out this kind of scam. Harshly punish the perpetrators. Don't reward their "ingenuity" with higher paying jobs and positions of prestige. Am I wrong here? Come on!
How am I to know that anything I buy with my credit card will not instantly set off an automatic rebilling every month? I want to know people are working on this. I want to know the leaders of our countries are wiping out internet fraud and credit card fraud, not practicing it themselves. I want to know that not only are they trying to get rid of such corruption, but that they'd never commit it themselves. Most especially not in the very campaigns that got them into government! You know who the best example for every kind of fraud there is is.
How is THIS guy not yet in prison? Look at just one of the many examples of fraud he committed that amounts to nothing more refined or sophisticated than pulling a gun on a person walking down the street and mugging that person. The story was in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal. I only used the less official sounding source because I've used up my weekly limits to the other two.
What gives folks? How can we expect people to not fuck each other in the ass if our leaders and captains of industry do it themselves? What needs to happen is people need to be made examples. We need to find some of the biggest offenders like Trump and say to them: (I'm going to need you to imagine the person in the following clip is saying "Donald," not "Larry.")
I tell you without a word of a lie, if I found out who the creator of automatic rebilling, or even just the creator of one of the sites that nailed me was, I met that soulless incubus or succubus, and happened to have a crow bar in my hands, I think I'd go ahead and do what Walter Sobchak is doing in the above clip, only I'd do it to that person. But then I'D go to prison, wouldn't I? For the crime of wiping pure evil from the earth.For crying out loud, even China, CHINA is at least making a show of trying to fight corruption! From time to time the CCP makes a big show of arresting someone for corruption. They might even make a BIGGER show and kill them. Take Lai Xiaomin for example. Former top banker and asset management company Huaron chairman, He had connections. He used those connections to get bribes. He is also reported to have had about 100 mistresses. I saw a vid in which he was explaining that he never spent the money, just collected it. Wanna make a girl hot? Take her to a room where the walls are made of stacks of bills. It couldn't have been his looks. He took a lot of bribes and saved a lot of money, but he was executed early this year.
Is this guy's story a deterrent? Look how old he was! He had 277 million bucks, 100 mistresses, and, look how old he was! Execution saved him from suffering through the worst years of his life! Do you think there are any young scamsters in China changing their ways after hearing about Lai Xiaomin? Quite the opposite I'm sure. Such is the case with so many "successful" people who got that way by being complete assholes. Greed is good. Assholes are heroes. A one-week membership is a lifetime membership. And China, maybe the furthest country from the Olympian ideals, gets the Olympics for a SECOND time!
But we're all still sucking their arses aren't we? Canada is probably the worst. Preferred trading partner status! We've had some rough times since the current PM isn't a wannabe Chinaman, but still kowtowing. Recently not only didn't boycott the upcoming 2022 Beijing Olympics, but instructed the Canadian team to say nice things about China. Well YEAH! If you don't, you might not be let out of the country like 13 people since the Huawei Princess affair. (see other blog post).
And with TSM or TSMC poised to corner the semiconductor market for the Taiwanese (who don't like China) is it any wonder Chinese/Taiwanese relations are more strained than ever? So even though Taiwan has never been Chinese territory really, China's going to try to convince the world that they were, and pull another Hong Kong, rather than, you know, just do business honestly. That'll be how they steal the most important market in the world nowadays, microchips. And who has the balls to stop them? None of the most "civilized" countries of the world. They're falling all over themselves to get the two things China offers: the huge market and that sweet, sweet slave labour.
I've heard that any country who boycotts the Beijing Olympics will be aggressively sanctioned by China. This according to their emperor for life Xi Jin Ping.
So if you're an athlete there, don't talk about human rights violations; don't talk about the Dalai Lama or the disputed border with India; don't talk about the Uyghurs or the fact that China burns more coal than every other country in the world combined; don't talk about the messed up social credit system; don't talk about the Great Leap Backward or the cultural revolution; don't talk about their abysmal worker's rights; corruption; cheating; lying; stealing; or Winnie the fucking Pooh! Everything will be great. Or else.
Dammit! China's close and I know my way around! I bet NHLers will be there too! But I'll be boycotting. We all should. But we won't. We'll normalize things. I fucking LOVE that euphemism! "Normalization." One of the greatest words of the 20th century. We'll act as if there's nothing wrong. We'll support our athletes, sing our country songs and worship bits of cloth with maple leafs or stars and stripes or hammers and sickles.
And we sure as Szechuan aren't going to care about the evils of automatic rebilling are we? I guess I shouldn't sweat the small stuff should I? 60 bucks a month is "small stuff." It goes back to that all too familiar life philosophy that I loathe more and more every day, the "well-at-least" life philosophy. Well at least I'm not a Uyghur! Well at least I'm not working for nothing! Well at least I'm not in a country run by an emperor and Big Brother. At least I'm not getting killed (Tiananmen) or thrown in jail (like Liu Xiaobo) for fighting for human rights. At least I'm not making two bucks a day. At least I'm not happy about my country because I recently started earning two bucks a day instead of one.
But contrary to everyone who knows me's beliefs, I am an optimist. I'll never stop being one. I believe in the Olympian philosophy exalting all the best qualities of the body and mind, not the least. Will, mind, education, competition, athleticism, culture, joy, respect, and ethics. I dream of a day when I can trust established businesses to charge me for only what I bought with my credit card and for the authorities to disestablish businesses who charge for more. I dream of the day the Olympics will be given to a country that is truly Olympian. But since there isn't one, what the hell, let's give them to China again.
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